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Student, Denied Degree For MySpace Photo, Sues
gwoodrow writes "We've all heard the 'fired because of MySpace' stories, where a simple blog or picture gets someone canned. But now one of the targets is fighting back. (The offending picture in this case was a snap from Halloween 2005 of the student in a pirate outfit drinking from a cup.)" From the article: "Teacher in training Stacy Snyder was denied her education degree on the eve of graduation when Millersville University apparently found pictures on her MySpace page 'promoting underage drinking.' As a result, the 27-year-old mother of two had her teaching certificate withheld and was granted an English degree instead. In response, Snyder has filed a Federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania university asking for her education diploma and certificate along with $75,000 in damages."
But I must be thankful that the new wave of religious moralism has not (yet) arrived here from America... But sadly, I expect it to arrive very soon...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
... and that picture says "Argh, matey, I'm mighty thirsty", but that's about it.
Perhaps some bored grad students at Millersville University, those who aren't working on OSS projects of course, will snap a few pic's of the University's administrators so others can jump to conclusions about them too.
There was more. The school district where she was a student teacher was the impetus behind this. The district told the university that if she was awarded a teaching certificate, the district would stop using student teachers from the university. I'm guessing that the university felt it needed the school district for the broader good of its other teaching students. I'm not saying the university was right to not fight the district to the death, but clearly it was a more rational choice. The school district, however...
Hmm, there has to be more to the story than the picture..
That's an opaque cup and could contain ANYTHING.. (Even DiHydrogenMonoxide, insidious stuff that it is..)
If the picture is all the University powers-that-be went on.. They deserved to be slammed for everything
she can get out of them.. If there's more to the story, (and NOT fictional documentation by the school),
then she's got another issue.
Good luck to Mrs. Snyder..
Rocketman56
She was denied the degree she was expecting to get and had worked toward -- I'm not sure why they would change her degree like that, unless the education degree includes the teaching certificate as well. Either way, it's a seemingly arbitrary change by the administration to the outcome of her education that will affect her in her chosen profession.
It's lunacy -- I heard the story a few days ago and figured there must be more to it, but having read more about it now, I don't think there is. Apparently if you have any semblance of an adult life outside school, you're unfit to teach (according to the Morals Police).
Reminds me of the Sprout Goodnight Show host and her firing -- she'd been in some short PSA spoofs about sex SEVEN YEARS before she worked at Sprout (which is a 24-hour PBS Kids network), but parents pressured PBS to fire her and they did so. I guess all that matters is that someone thinks something is bad -- that's now apparently enough to make it true. Here's the Sprout story, by the way. My kid didn't seem to care, but I'm sure others did.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
(1) Arrested in the hospital for public drunkenness and underage drinking after you are taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning a day before your 21st bday. This actually happened to a friend. I guess that it's far better to let students with alcohol poisoning choke on their own vomit than go to the hospital and risk getting arrested.
(2) Arrested for felony riot for telling a cop who had just hit a fellow student in the face at a Red Cross benefit show that he'd be better off helping clean up NYC after 9/11 than harrassing students who ARE actually trying to help. This actually happened to me a few weeks after 9/11/2001, and fucked with my life for the next few years (difficult to get a job, probation basically required for me to move out of state).
In short; to Hell with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the puritanical prigs who seem to run the government and apparently non-governmental organizations as well.
-b.
Without taking sides, I can see in the thinking of the board. If the teacher thought underage drinking was cool at 25, then is there reason to believe that the attitude has changed now? Kids have sufficient access to alcohol without teachers supplying it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"It's because students (you kids can laugh all you want) view teachers as role models - thus if a kid gets on the net, goes 'Hey, miss so-and-so is a drunk!' it changes the perception in their mind slightly that 'drinking is a bad thing'. Hence the promoting-underage-drinking."
When I was at school our chemistry teacher used to swig pure alcohol from the science supplies, and our maths teacher took us to the pub when we were 16 or 17 to celebrate our exam results (legal age is 18 here). So the idea that kids will be irrevocably damaged by seeing a picture of their teacher drinking seems ludicrous to me.
I'm still amazed how puritanical America is compared to Britain (which has become puritanical enough itself in the last few years).
No, I'm guessing that in the other pictures (since we only get to see the least offending picture of the bunch) show underage drinkers at the party. If someone with a teaching degree (or voc rehab, etc) is caught providing alcohol to minors, they get their certification revoked. I had a roommate in college with that situation...which got very annoying.
Still, since I'm guessing the 'underage' drinkers at the party weren't holding their IDs out in the picture, it makes for a ridiculous accusation that the school could take away her degree without proof that there were underage drinkers there.
You are exactly right. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania placed high standards on our teachers, including requiring them to maintain a certain degree of virtue and decorum in their private lives. In fact, any teacher found committing even a misdemeanor even in a non-public forum can be stripped of their credentials at anytime. Further, the entire text of the article explained that there were some concerns raised by her practicum advisers. The implication being that she wasn't really up to par after all. So, while Millersville University took a harsh approach to this one candidate, I actually applaud their efforts. As little as 20 years ago in Pennsylvania and across the country, Universities maintained the right of "in loco parentis" (sp?). Now, Universities are petrified of ticking a student off and incurring the inevitable litigation. Maybe the pendulum will begin to swing back toward some serious ass-kicking on students. Professors are NOT there to baby sit. Professors do NOT have to "give A's" to everyone. Students are NOT entitled to a degree. Students who work full-time so they can afford a nice car, cheap booze, and loads of pot are going to have serious difficulty maintaining any academic standing. So, go MU, I think you sent a strong message to students. I just hope it doesn't go too far. P.S. Teachers aren't the only individuals expected to maintain social decorum - so are commonwealth employees.
Which leads one to believe that the university was being pressured from the district to do something about her and let them save face. Presumably the district feels they're in a position of enough power (taking on most of their students for their student teaching assignments?) that they could do this.
However, if you look at the response from Conestoga Valley, available on their website here, they state that's untrue, and include some more information not linked in the Washington Post article, including what they claim is the offending Myspace blog post which is not the picture hosted by thesmokinggun.com which the WP article links to. It could be a little damning towards her if you believe the district that she was actively encouraging the kids to go to her Myspace page, but then, not knowing what her page is (I would imagine by now it's either been deleted or locked down anyway) it'd be hard to say whether the content therein is really unacceptable for the students to see.
One quote from their response troubles me to some degree though, from her cooperating teacher, Nicole Reinking:
Certainly that can be taken any number of ways, some good, some bad, but taking it simply at face value, it saddens me to see where education has gone these days. Growing up in rural Maine (not that there's really any other kind of Maine
Regardless, in the end I'm a little surprised and frightened that a university feels they have the ability to do this. That after someone has paid them tens of thousands of dollars for their education, and has presumably satisfactorily completed the academic requirements, they can one day before graduation tell you "Yeah, we're not going to give you the degree you wanted, have this English degree instead." What's to keep them from doing that to someone else because they don't like brunettes or people from Alaska? (Don't answer that, I know it's a stupid question.
Funny and very likely insightful. I bet she can prove that. Should have upped her damages claim.
Many years ago I went to an evangelical Lutheran teachers college for two years. Among their many amusing mores: no smoking for women, no drinking anytime, anywhere no matter how old you were, students of the opposite sex could be in your room every other Sunday from 1 p.m.-4 p.m. with your door open, all overnights were signed out, the RA would unlock your door around midnight to see that you were there Friday and Saturday nights, no dancing during lent and everything, library included, closed every morning M-F for chapel. AND 7 AM classes. But Freshman hazing was OK.
The other two years were at a state college where pretty much anything the dorm floor tribe approved of was OK as long as non-consentual personal injury didn't result. The atmosphere was SO much more normal and SELF-controlled. Believe me, I would MUCH rather trust a child's mental growth to one of them than the evangelicals.
That was a lawsuit allegation. Any sources besides the disgruntled student?
She wasn't denied her teaching certificate due to this photograph.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
You can correct the relative population growth rate by increasing reproduction rates of the non-religious, OR by increasing the death rate of the religious.
...
So I guess it's not such a bad thing that red-staters are the first to volunteer for wars
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Check out http://www.vhemt.org/ for some thoughts about a future without children.
c++;
c++;
How dare you temper the righteous outrage of the Slashdot community with FACTS!
Someone mod this guy troll so we can go back to ignorantly denouncing the school administrators.
> Is there going to be a time when humans just don't do this kind of thing?
Perhaps surprisingly, such a time is indeed spoken of in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, a time in the future when the Christ returns, takes over, and rules for a thousand years. However, apparently nobody really likes it very much, because after a thousand years of it when Satan is let loose, the bulk of the population immediately rallies behind him to rebel against God in the battle of God and Magog. So apparently people will only put up with peace and good behavior if you force it upon them, and as soon as they see a chance they rise up against it.
I have often wondered how long it took Adam and Eve to rebel. Genesis does not say how long they were in the garden before the little incident with the fruit. If I had to guess, based on my observations of modern humans, I give them about a week and a half, tops.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Actually, this kind of excessive force against teachers has been going on for about 200 or so years. For example, back in the late 1800's, women teachers weren't allowed to marry, and male teachers weren't allowed to have their hair cut in a barber shop in Philidelphia. Teachers aren't allowed to have social lives in the public eye. It's a good way to get fired, even though you're not doing anything to harm the students and may be the best teacher they've ever hired. Even after social liberation late last century, there's still a culture lag for teachers.
SRSLY.
Having read some of the associated articles, it sounds like her mentor at Conestoga HS had told her that she had to maintain a more professional image in front of her students. There was apparently a specific objection to her maintaining a MySpace web presence that was visited by at least one student. Presumably the pirate photo was used as an example of this broader behavior.
My thinking is that social networking through MySpace and similar web sites, and also blogging, are too new for anyone to be making determinations about what constitutes appropriate behaviors on them. However there is clearly one teacher at Conestoga HS who has decided that it is unprofessional for a teacher to have such a web presence that students could easily access; that this bordered on fraternizing with the students. And this one teacher has been able to persuade the credentialing body at uni to withhold her Teaching Certificate.
I think it is unfortunate that any representative of the teaching profession feels that the only contact a professional teacher should have with any student is in the classroom. This is a confusion of specific, limited roles (teacher, student) with the holistic individuals who play those roles for only a few hours a day, a few days each week. I think most teachers are bright enough to find other ways of using their professional persona, without crippling the other aspects of their life.
Having spent a miserable Senior year at Conestoga HS, I can state that it was one of the most overtly racist and class-conscious institutions I have encountered in my 50+ years. It is also the only place where I have ever heard faculty describe their institution as a "factory" whose purpose is to churn out "quality product". I can well imagine that faculty at Conestoga are having difficulty coming to terms with web technology, where the age, sex, race, style of attire, and other clues to social status of persons you might exchange emails with are not available.
Racism and class consciousness are not part of the internet experience: you, Dear Reader, have no clue to my race, social standing, etc, etc, beyond what I might choose to tell you (and even then you have no way to verify). The racism and class consciousness that so badly mars that part of Pennsylvania (the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia) cannot survive without those little clues. People who willingly participate on the web are a direct threat to a very narrow and ugly way of life there.
What's to say that this isn't water? Are teaching students supposed to swear off all liquids? Even assuming it is 120 proof grain alcohol, does that school have a rule against adult students drinking?
I keep thinking that Rod Serling is going to step out from behind a door and say, "A quiet campus in a quiet town becomes the stage for tragedy when teetotalers go on a witch hunt, in the Twilight Zone."
-- QED
FERPA applies to all students, and covers more than just academic scores and academic file. It can also include whether or not a student is enrolled, their name, status, class, any contact information, and a lot more. In certain cases a school cannot even confirm whether or not someone is a student there.
> In the USA, I wonder if a teacher can say something which is scientifically true
> but socially/politically-incorrect, like stating that moderate consumption of alcohol
> is actually healthy.
In certain parts of the USA, teachers may not even teach the theory of evolution, or that the earth is more than 6,000 years old!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
You know, one of the best teachers I ever had was my high school Economics teacher, but he taught so much more than economics. He taught life. Many of his stories involved things that he could not recommend we do, given that he was a teacher.
Example: In class, we were learning about things that can increase production. One of the things on the list was more educated/intelligent employees. Then he started with a story about when he worked on a machine where he would have to take bundles of cardboard, stuff them into the shredder, and repeat this for his 8 hour day. Now, it didn't take him long to figure out how to be a little too enthusiastic stuffing cardboard into the shredder, and jam the whole thing up. When that happened, he'd have to go outside, climb the ladder up to the roof, and fix the clog. So, when it was a nice day outside, and sweltering inside, there was a much greater chance of him 'accidentally' jamming the machine, going outside, climbing up to the roof, and relaxing until he started hearing boots on the ladder, which was his signal to fix the problem before his supervisor caught him wasting time in the sun.
A teacher is not supposed to recommend learning how to cheat your employer to students. People would probably call it unprofessional. But if people had stopped him from getting his teaching certificate, that would have been a far greater problem.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Some historians point to a declining birthrate as the cause of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Decadence and homosexuality (which avoided children) caused massive drops in birth rates, and eventually Rome collapsed.
If you think about the economics of inheritence, it's even more stark. Now we split inheritence by all children (traditionally only male, or lesser shares for daughters), but the number of children determines the wealth build up. A family with 4 heirs will pass along half the wealth as a family with 2 heirs. The secular families not only fail to maintain their share of the population, they build up wealth quickly over a few generations. Now we have wealthy children with trust funds... they aren't likely to take up arms and defend Rome... Rome's vassal system of poor soldiers from slave colonies and client-kingdoms let by officers of Roman stock simply collapsed when there weren't younger sons of aristocrats willing to become officers searching for glory. Apparently with enough wealth, one need not have glory.
Not terribly ironic, how did the Abrahamic faiths spread to cover half the world. The rules are quite simple:
1. Take virgin wives, be fruitful and multiple with them
2. If you don't have a child within 10 years, she's infertile, dump her
3. Don't have gay sex (which doesn't create children), but have lots of sex with your wife/wives about 10 days after her menstruation (when she's fertile)
4. Never use birth control, keep having children
5. Preserve and build the community, the community trumps the individual
That is a methodoly for taking over the world.
Contrast that with the secular ethos:
1. Sex is fun, have it as much as you want as often as you want, preferably for years (the most fertile ones), but make sure to use a condom
2. Marriage is something risky, push it off a while, just keep having sex for recreation first
3. More education is better... Age 16 isn't enough, a high school diploma @ 18 isn't enough, a college degree at 22 isn't really enough, how about some grad school (24-28)... DO NOT GET MARRIED BEFORE YOU FINISH OR WE TAKE YOUR FUNDING AWAY
4. Start your career before starting a family, wait a few more years
5. Don't have more than 2 kids, you're a breeder and sucking up resources... Let's cap every woman at 2 kids, and not wonder what happens when not all women have kids
6. Spoil your children, so they push off real life an extra few years...
7. Oh, and gay sex should be idealized, not stigmatized, and considered an innate behavior
8. Screw the community, individual liberty is all that matters, whatever makes you happy.
Which one will take over the world in a few generations?
The only reason I bring up the gay sex is that while I don't really care what people do, it certainly isn't a precreation-supported behavior. While a certain amount of sexual desire is innate and certainly biological, there is definitely some social shaping of it... Bisexuality amongst women moved from taboo to "sexy" and a MUCH higher percentage of teenagers poll as "bisexual" than the general population... Doesn't mean that they are acting on it for real, but social factors can certainly influence behavior. A man who mostly feels urges towards men but occaisionally does towards women might be able to marry and have a family if under social pressure to do so, but if gay sex is an equally valid option will most likely go that route and probably be happier... if you goal is individual happiness, than gay rights is a civil right, if your goal is societal growth, then it's to be condemned (perhaps by
There's a large difference between "it's not right" and "I don't like it".
My mother is a big Barry Manilow fan. I don't like that. I don't care for his music, it even makes me a little sad that she spends money going to his concerts.
But that fact that I don't like my mother's being a Barry Manilow fan, in no way implies that being a Barry Manilow fan is ethically wrong.
If you want to say that polyamory is somehow distasteful to you, fine. I can no more argue with your taste in love-styles than argue that Bach should be more to your liking than Brahms. But you do have the obligation to accurately understand the love-style before deciding if it's to your taste or not, just as you have to hear both Bach and Brahms before rendering your musical judgment; your comments show that you do not.
If you want to argue that polyamory is wrong, though, you'll need something more than "I don't like it". You'll need a coherent ethical framework, and an argument within it.
What, no one gets hurt, attached, jealous, et cetera in monogamous (or attempted monogamous) relationships?
Yes, people get hurt in romantic and sexual relationships. The best way to reduce the risk of that is to put aside social conventions and assumptions, and honestly work out with other people what sort of relationships you want.
Judgmental rhetoric about how what other people want in a relationship is "wrong", makes it that much more difficult for others to put aside assumptions and be honest. Your condemnation makes it less likely that people will be honest and thoughtful, and more likely that they will be hurt.
Please, stop engaging in behavior that makes it more likely that people will be hurt.
People can have multiple relationships that involve both emotional support and sex.
Don't you think half-remembered experiments on rats are a poor way to inform your thinking about human relationships?
Bully for you. Whatever floats your boat. I wish you much happiness in whatever sort of relationship(s) work(s) for you. Just don't project your preferences on to others. Is that too much to ask?
(You might even find that your preferences, or your understanding of them, changes over time.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Hi;
:-)
While I recognize that you cannot comment on the ongoing federal lawsuit, I would like to send my sincere thanks to your institution for teaching us all a very valuable civics lesson regarding the current state of our Constitutional liberties in our great republic.
As a state university, your officers are agents of the state. Just as the Bush Administration (like the Clinton administration before it) has gone out of their way to suggest that any of their compelling interests (like the appearance of security) take precidence over our essential liberties, so too have you shown that you the once-cherished Freedom of Speech seems to be dead if one might misinterpret the ideas as supporting even in the abstract the possibility of lawless action.
I would sincerely hope you start encouraging law schools to omit Brandenburg v. Ohio (and the previous cases such as Yeates and Whitney) from their curriculums since these might too be taken as supporting ideas which are dangerous to our sense of right society. Once we can ensure that these pesky precidents are forgotted about, we can get back to the business of creating a society of pleasant appearance, free from those pesky liberties which are the source of all bad choices.
And no, I am not a lawyer
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP